


Lonely Ghost

by 2woodroses



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, first fic so be gentle please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23365072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2woodroses/pseuds/2woodroses
Summary: I was big mad that we didn't get to see Echo finding out that Fives is dead. So big mad, in fact, that I wrote my first real fic.Set in transit between the finishing of the last mission and the gang getting back to Anaxes.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	Lonely Ghost

The explosion of Trench’s dreadnought gingerly faded away, leaving only fragments of hull plating and anonymous rubble. Tech brought the _Havoc Marauder_ away onto their departure vector and guided her smoothly into hyperspace. 

Echo let out all the air in his lungs. So that was that, then. 

Or at least, until the next mission. 

Crosshair stood and marched out of the cockpit into one of the back rooms without waiting to be dismissed. Skywalker ignored this and also stood, leaning over Tech’s shoulder to check their destination coordinates. 

“Alright, men. Let’s get all the reports and paperwork out of the way while we’ve got downtime,” Skywalker said briskly. “Echo, I haven’t received any word from command about where we’ll be placing you. I assume 501st, but you might need some shore leave to get all your…gear…straightened out.” 

Gear. Right. That stuff. 

“Rex, see if you can’t rustle up some forms and get me Echo’s ID back online—”

Oh. Skywalker probably meant his implants, not armor and whatnot. 

He tuned back in to the conversation.

“Yessir,” Rex was saying, and beckoned Echo to head into the next room. 

The door hissed closed behind them. Echo glanced sideways and saw Crosshair watching them from half-closed eyes, like a dozing cat. 

He elected to put that aside as Rex crossed the room to his bag of non-essentials and pulled out a datapad. 

“I’m not sure I actually have the clearance to reopen your profile, but considering the circumstances, I should be able to…” He trailed off, diving into the familiar tangles of Republic bureaucracy. 

Echo scuffed the floor with the tip of his foot. Rex wandered over to a crate of rations and sat, engrossed in the datapad. 

Crosshair, for his part, looked dead to the world. Had he really skipped out on debriefing in order to take a nap?

Rex put his chin in his hand. “If Skywalker gave us his authorization, we could use the standard reinstatement form, but we don’t have his signature yet, so let’s see about…”

Echo waited aimlessly. “Can we ask him for his authorization?” he asked tentatively.

“No, I don’t want to bother him,” Rex said. “He’s still busy talking to Hunter.”

Echo could hear faint voices through the door, too quiet to make out words. It was odd that Rex would hesitate to get Skywalker’s attention about something important like this. 

“Here—” Rex gestured vaguely, still looking at the datapad. “Let me scan your ID chip, see if that’ll get us somewhere.”

There was a long pause. Echo lifted his right arm, the one with the manipulator, a hair. 

“Oh.” Rex pointedly closed the form he had been filing. “So that’s out.”

Echo amused himself by trying to remember if there even were any forms for this situation. There were some having to do with prisoners of war, but he couldn’t remember if they needed an ID chip or not. 

“Hmm.” Rex sighed and tossed the datapad aside. “No, we need his clearance. We’ll just wait until he’s done.”

The silence stretched out over the gap between them. 

Echo tried to subtly lean out and get a look at Crosshair’s face. He was definitely asleep. He hadn’t bothered to take his rifle off his back, but he was slumped awkwardly against the bulkhead. 

Echo cast about for something to say, discarding any number of questions as too direct. 

“How—uh, how’s the 501st?” he tried. 

Rex got a hunted look about him. “Well Jesse and Kix are still around, you know nothing could get them to stop, uh…” He shifted in his seat. “There’s Appo, I don’t know if you know him…”

Echo’s stomach lurched. So he’d been right, then. That awful sinking, crushing feeling he’d got on Anaxes when Rex had hurried him through the base to discuss the plan for the mission, when he hadn’t seen Fives. He’d been right. 

“I’m sorry, Echo, I… I should’ve told you sooner.” Rex’s hands hovered uselessly, and dropped back to his side. 

Echo couldn't think of anything to say. 

They sat, wrapped up in everything unspoken for a long moment. 

Echo steeled himself. “How did it happen?” he asked. 

The question rung out like a shot. 

Rex blinked. “Well, part of it is classified, and it’s a long story, but I—well…” He leaned back. “You ought to know,” he said, half to himself. 

“It—I guess it really started with one of our newer troopers, Tup. Nice guy. Kind of a shame, what happened.” Rex breathed in and out. “The first part of it happened on a mission on Ringo Vinda. Tup caught some kind of a parasite, a virus or something that made him irrational. It wasn’t his fault, he had a lot of potential, but…

“He killed a Jedi.” 

The shock of it—he killed a Jedi. It almost made him willing to hear the rest of the story, made the awful tension grotesquely interesting. 

“So him and Fives went back to Kamino because we were still trying to figure out what was going on, if the parasite was contagious. The 501st and I were wrapping up on Ringo Vinda when I heard that he’d escaped somehow, that Tup had died of some kind of brain tumor, and we needed to go to Coruscant.” Rex looked lost in the memory. 

“He…he started believing in all sorts of things, conspiracy theories, that there was a plot to bring down the Jedi and the Republic from the inside, that we clones all…” Rex adjusted his vambraces, a quick nervous twist. 

“He actually…To be frank, he was dangerous. The Coruscant Guard got involved, and I don’t know how familiar you are with Captain Fox, but he takes planetary security pretty seriously, and…” 

The conclusion lay plain before him. 

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really.”

Echo felt cold, and small. 

There didn’t seem to be anything he could do. 

“I’m sorry,” Rex said. 

Shot like a dog in some nameless alley in the dark of Coruscant’s underbelly. He’d been a—not a hope. An idea. A far-off possibility, that things would go back to normal. That it would all work out in the end. That he would have that friendly refuge, who knew him better that he knew himself. 

Conspiracy theories. A plot to kill the Jedi. His dreams, drugged and hazy. The mission. 

Echo was blank. He’d known, on some seething, grieving level, that people would have died while he was gone. Someone he knew would have died in some horrible, bloody way, left to rot on a nameless, faceless planet. He hadn’t thought that it would be Fives. He hadn’t—he didn’t—  
He took a deep breath, and Rex reached out and gently touched his arm. “I’m sorry,” he said again, pointlessly. “I tried to—”

“It’s all right,” Echo stopped him. It really wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. 

Echo stood, suddenly overcome with the need to run, to punch something, to hit a million targets dead on, to strangle someone, to collapse on the floor and never move again. Rex followed him up. 

From across the room, Crosshair came alive and watched the sudden movement. They awkwardly made eye contact, and Crosshair looked away deliberately, tipping his head to rest against the bulkhead once more. 

Echo sat, suddenly drained of everything. So there was no one in the 501st that he knew, really knew. 

There was a long pause, of Echo staring at the ground and Rex feeling the need to adjust his vambraces again. 

“I’d better see about—the paperwork—” Rex got out, and headed into the cockpit. Through the open door, Echo saw that Hunter was also asleep and Wrecker looked fully prepared to blow up another ship. 

The door closed. 

Crosshair gave up the pretense of napping and tucked his legs up on the seat. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind, then changed his mind again. 

“You know the 501st isn’t everything, yeah?” 

He let that sink in. 

Crosshair evidently thought that was perfectly clear, and slid off the seat and headed into the back cabins, leaving Echo alone. 

So that was that. The end of an era. The ties were cut. 

Echo leaned back against the bulkhead, and tried not to think about anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I would actually love to hear what you thought! Hits, misses, errata, etc!


End file.
